


Night Move

by T Verano (t_verano)



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Angst, Coda for TSbyBS, Community: sentinel_thurs, M/M, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 15:36:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18831577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t_verano/pseuds/T%20Verano
Summary: The offer of the badge is on the table, and Blair knows what call he has to make.Things get complicated. Of course they do.





	Night Move

**Author's Note:**

> written for Sentinel Thursday challenge 596: "hostile"
> 
> (Before anyone gets all "Oh, Bob Seger's Night Moves" and starts anticipating a bunch of steaminess and/or correspondence to the song lyrics, this is not that fic. This is another fic entirely. :-))

"I can't."

Two words. Two _syllables._ Funny how two simple, straightforward syllables could be harder to say tonight than it had been to get through an entire paragraph's worth of nouns and verbs last week, words that had been specifically chosen to obliterate a career, a reputation, a life. 

Two words that Blair might as well not have said, if Jim's non-reaction was anything to go by. The beer Jim had just retrieved from its cork coaster (no condensation rings allowed on Jim's coffee table, not a chance) didn't pause on its steady trek towards his mouth, and Jim's eyes remained fixed on SportsCenter. 

Right. Blair breathed in, one slow breath, and out just as slowly; not as much a sigh as a centering of energy. "Jim, I can't," he said again. 

No reaction. 

_Almost_ no reaction - the fingers wrapped around the beer bottle tightened; Blair could see the flesh of Jim's fingertips lose color where it was pressed against the brown glass of the bottle. There was no other sign that Jim had heard him, though. He swallowed his mouthful of beer smoothly and sucked in a follow-up just as smoothly. His gaze stayed locked on the TV. 

"You know I can't." Blair closed his eyes for a moment, gathering his forces. He'd known how this was going to go down, after all. He'd known since they'd ganged up on him in the bullpen this afternoon. 

Another deep breath. "Jim," he said, and God, his voice was cracking, "you _know_ I can't."

One apparently indifferent Ellison shoulder rose in a shrug. "No idea what you're talking about, Sandburg," Jim said. His tone was flat, but Blair had no problem hearing the warning just below the surface. His eyes remained glued to SportsCenter like Chris Berman was about to reveal the meaning of life. 

"Come on. You know." Weirdly, Blair's hand hurt, and he glanced down at it for a moment's reprieve before he had to irrevocably trash his life again. _Finish_ trashing it. His hand didn't provide much of a distraction - he'd clenched his fist hard enough that his fingernails were digging into his palm, that was all - and he pulled in one last fortifying breath. "You _know,_ man. The badge."

The beer bottle, halfway through its journey back down to the coffee table, stopped moving. 

"You 'can't'." Blair had heard that tone in Jim's voice too often lately, and he flinched as Jim went on, "You _can't?_ What the hell was up with all the song and dance this afternoon, then?"

"You guys were the ones doing the song and dance, not me." And shit, that sounded defensive, and that wasn't going to help. Blair sighed and rubbed his forehead. "I couldn't talk to you or Simon in the bullpen. It was too public. Just like it would be too public if I became a cop. Right now, anyway."

Jim's eyes weren't locked on Chris Berman anymore, which Blair might have considered to be progress if the expression in them had been easier to deal with. Not that he'd expected anything different.

"I meant what I said, that you're a good cop." Defensiveness again, this time - no surprise there - from Jim. "You're going to throw that away?" 

Defensiveness, with the obligatory side of accusation. Blair could almost laugh. It always came back to the same thing. Which was over. Everything was over; Jim just hadn't accepted it yet. It was Naomi and Sid and the diss all over again, only this time it was Jim clinging to dumb blind hope that things could be salvaged, Jim who was wilfully ignoring the truth. 

Blair's hand still hurt. He stared at it, then unclenched his fist slowly. "I have to 'throw it away', Jim. Think about it. I publicly - very publicly - admit I'm a fraud and that I deliberately screwed you over, and a few weeks later I show up as your official partner, with a detective's badge? The press would be all over it."

"Simon wouldn't have pulled the strings to get you into the PD if we didn't think we could make it work." Jim set the beer bottle down, centering it precisely on the coaster. His eyes found Blair's again. "You're going to make me say it again? Fine. I want you as my partner. Working with me. As a cop."

"You're not making it any easier - "

"You think I'm going to make it 'easier' for you to flake out on me? To throw everything away? Think again, Chief."

Blair ran a hand through his hair. "Jim -"

"Is that what you want? You want out?"

"How the hell can you say that, man? After -" Blair stopped himself with an effort. "It doesn't matter what I want. It doesn't even matter what _you_ want, unless you suddenly decide you're okay with the whole world knowing you're a sentinel. Which you wouldn't be. It's your life, Jim -"

"My life is private, Sandburg."

"Which is why I can't work with you. Not now." This time Blair clenched his hand deliberately, digging his fingernails into his palm to force the pain as a counter-balance against the pain inside him, the pain of the rest of what he had to say. "It's why I can't keep staying here. I need to leave. I should have already left. I just..." 

He just hadn't. Hadn't been able to. 

Had to. 

"You need to leave," Jim repeated. His voice was flat again. Hard. "To protect me, is that what you're telling yourself? I think you've got it wrong. You leave, it won't be to protect me."

"What the hell do you mean by that? I've already thrown the spotlight on you once, accidentally," carelessly, _unforgivably,_ he added silently, "and I'm not going to do it again. I need to protect your -"

"Yourself. That's really what you're thinking: you need to protect yourself." Jim stood up, favoring his mostly healed leg. He was watching Blair like a cat might watch a snake in the grass. 

Blair closed his eyes against that too-familiar expression. "Protect _myself?_ I don't have anything left to protect, Jim."

The huff of laughter Jim gave sounded bitter. "You're usually a pretty smart guy, Chief. Figure it out."

"Jim -"

"Nobody in the media has given a crap since your press conference. They've got bigger fish to fry than your 'work of fiction'." 

The words hurt, the anger in Jim's voice hurt - what _didn't_ hurt right now? - and Blair forced himself to open his eyes. Jim was limping towards the balcony door. Without turning around he added, "Think about it, Chief." 

Think about it. Blair buried his head in his hands as Jim shut himself away on the balcony. Think about it. 

Don't think about it. 

At least Naomi was gone. One less complication. And that was a crappy thing to say about your own mother, but he was still reeling from her painfully artificial performance in the bullpen - which was something he didn't _have_ to think about to understand - and the regret he felt that she'd fled to a taxi and the airport before he could reassure her that he wasn't on the verge of becoming a cop was minor. 

The regret he felt about not being able to accept that badge and not being able to work with Jim anymore? That regret, no matter its dimensions, didn't matter. Couldn't matter. He'd only ever been a pretend cop, anyway. He wasn't exactly cop material, no matter what Jim said. 

Detective material, though... He could have been detective material. Could be. Sometime. Maybe. 

Except he couldn't. Jim was wrong. Jim wasn't looking at the whole picture. Just like he himself hadn't ever really stopped to look at the whole picture about the diss. _The Sentinel,_ by Blair Sandburg: the gift that just keeps on giving. 

Don't think about it. 

He had to think about it. He had to make Jim understand. 

Following Jim out onto the balcony felt like walking to the scaffold. The air was cold and damp, sharpened by a fitful breeze coming off the water. Jim stood by the railing; ignoring the chill, as far as Blair could tell, staring out into the night. Something about the line of Jim's back made Blair wonder, as he stepped out onto the balcony, whether he was heading towards that scaffold as the condemned... or as the executioner.

He stopped just outside the door, centering himself. Or, more accurately, trying - and failing - to center himself.

"It's about time you stopped falling on your ceremonial sword, don't you think?" Jim said, without turning around. He sounded tired. 

Blair blinked. "I... what? That's not what I'm - I have to -"

"I remember you once asked me something about whether you were being a... 'spineless goober', I think it was. You've always been the opposite of that, Chief. Until now."

The stab of pain Jim's words brought was almost hidden by a sudden flare of anger. "That's not - how can you... Jesus, Jim. I don't _want_ to leave. It's the hardest thing I've ever done."

"Then don't do it."

"I'm trying to protect you, dammit!"

Jim turned around. The light from the loft windows fell on his face, on an expression that kept Blair frozen in place just outside the balcony door. "No. You're running scared, Sandburg. The Blair Sandburg I know only backs down long enough to come up with some crazy-ass solution to a problem, even when he's terrified out of his skull. You've got Simon and me, the whole unit, even the brass, willing to work with you, figure this situation out. If you run, it's because you _want_ to run. To protect yourself."

"That doesn't make any sense. This is going in circles, man. What is it you think I'm trying to protect myself from? It's not like I have a career left, or a reputation -"

Blair's words stopped abruptly. Which made sense - not that it made _sense_ \- because Jim had crossed the balcony, and his hands were on either side of Blair's face, and his mouth was closing in on Blair's mouth, and... 

And. 

The kiss was short and brutal. Angry. And _over_ \- Jim was already backing away, his face hidden by a patch of shadow. 

Blair had to swallow twice before he could get any words out. He tried to keep his voice even. "What was that?"

Jim's answering huff of laughter sounded ugly. "It's been too long if you have to ask, Chief."

This time the words came tumbling out without Blair's permission. "That felt more like a hostile takeover than a kiss, Jim."

Jim laughed again, but the ugliness Blair could still hear was all too clearly directed at himself. "Maybe you're right. I'm pretty sure you know me well enough by now. Open your goddamned eyes."

Blair could have laughed, himself, except that he really, really couldn't. "I think they're open now."

"And you're still leaving. It's not some kind of hypothetical risk to my privacy you can't face; it's what you want from me."

Before tonight, if you'd asked him, Blair would've said he was reasonably quick on his feet - get clobbered, think fast, react creatively, _survive._ But apparently that heretofore lifesaving talent was history. Right now he was stumbling, with no solid ground anywhere in sight. "What about what you want from me?" he asked, and God, his voice sounded wrecked. "Am I supposed to be running from that, too? Is that what you think?"

Jim didn't answer. His face was still in deep shadow, and the only thing Blair could really see well was a quickly aborted movement of his hand, but suddenly, somehow, it was enough. 

It was enough. And Blair could move again, away from the square foot of balcony he'd been rooted to ever since he'd followed Jim out here, move towards Jim. "Because -" he said, and it no longer mattered what his voice sounded like, as long as Jim understood what he was saying, "- because I am not running from that. I will never, so help me every diety I've ever heard of from to Inana to Q'uq'umatz, run from that. From this." He was right in front of Jim now, and reaching his hand up to cup the back of Jim's head and pull it down to bring that shadow-hidden mouth down to meet his own was the most natural thing in the world. 

It wasn't an angry kiss this time. 

Or a short one. 

Or one that spared any of Blair's attention at all, because when he finally broke away, needing to breathe, he found himself pressed against the balcony railing, with Jim's hands cradling his face, and rain falling on them both. 

"You're not leaving," Jim said, like it was nothing more than a simple statement of unimportant fact. Light from the streetlight just below seemed to be tangled in his eyelashes, thanks to the raindrops clinging to them, and the t-shirt he was wearing was succumbing to the rain, molding itself to his muscles. 

Which, frankly, Blair was doing a pretty good job of himself. He couldn't have stopped his hands from sliding up and down Jim's back, from anchoring Jim in place - from anchoring himself in place - if he'd tried. 

Not that he was about to try. Ever. "I never wanted to leave," he said, just before Jim dipped his head back down to seal the words on Blair's lips with a hungry gentleness that played total hell with Blair's knees, and - more hopelessly, helplessly, perfectly - his heart. 

"Not _I can't,_ " he thought, just before thinking became absolutely the last thing on his mind, "not _I can't,_ but _we will._ "

_We will._


End file.
